Hollywood, CA Lego fan Brandon Griffith created this fantastic chess set out of Lego elements. I love how he broke free of the chess paradigm of one figure per piece. For instance, the king shows Luke and Leia together, while the queen has Han and Chewie. Some of the pieces are tiny vignettes–take the king’s bishop, which shows Ben Kenobi turning off the Death Star’s tractor beam.

Since 1999, Lego has released over 100 different Star Wars Mini figures. To give Star Wars Lego justice, I decided to build three different Chess sets, one for each original episode. This is the first of the series. Star Wars: A New Hope Lego Chess.

My goals with the individual chess pieces is to:
1. Is durable enough to play the game with.
2. Present a piece that closely represents a scene form the movie. My favorites are “Obi-wan and the tractor beam” & “Greedo”

The chess board:
1. Built strong enough to carry with out breaking
2. The playing area easily removes from the rest of the board to reveal compartments to store the pieces.
3. The detailing on the side on the board utilizes a lot of SNOT (Studs Not On Tops) techniques. This a technique that came out of the Adult Lego community.

Other Facts:
1. The chess board is built on a base of layered Lego plates.
2. Weighs 25lbs.
3. the Minifigs were the most expensive part on the chess set.

See Griffith’s Flickr set with more views of the project, or click on the image above to see a bigger shot.